


the devil you know

by thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animal Death, Blood and Injury, Cryptids, F/M, Homelessness, Human/Monster Romance, Hunters & Hunting, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, New Jersey, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriarLily/pseuds/thewayofthetrashcompactor
Summary: Rey's been living on her own in the Pine Barrens for a while now, doing what she has to in order to survive. If that involves playing into some local legends to get a meal from gullible tourists, well, it's only giving them what they're looking for.She doesn't realize she's not alone out there.For the Reylo Readers and Writers Spooktacular Collection, day 25: Urban Legends
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53
Collections: Reylo Readers & Writers - The Spooktacular Collection





	the devil you know

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the Reylo Readers and Writers mods for running this challenge! I was really excited for this theme.

Rey lurks at the edge of the campsite, eyeing the food that a dark-skinned man unpacks from its wildlife-safe perch. Another man with black curls and a scruffy beard attempts to start a fire, while a short Asian woman gently sorts through cases of expensive equipment. The day's dying light leaves Rey in shadow outside of the glow cast by their lanterns and flashlights. 

She takes a step forward, and a twig cracks under her foot. She freezes, waiting to see if any of the campers heard. The man searching through the food looks back, brow furrowed. 

"Did you guys hear that?" he asks.

"Huh?" the woman responds.

The man grabs one of the flashlights and shines it over the trees around Rey. She jumps back, leaving only a flash of fur and a swirl of black in her wake.

"Fuck, I think that was him! It's the Devil!" he hisses loudly to his companions, who both drop what they're doing.

"Seriously? Shit shit shit," the woman says, fumbling through the bags of equipment for the one she needs. 

"Let's go!" The man at the fire leaves his pile of kindling behind to grab a flashlight and bolt in Rey's direction. The other two follow his lead. 

Rey scrambles up the pine closest to her, fast enough that she's looking down on the trio once they dive into the trees. They stumble to a halt, flashlights scanning the forest floor around them. 

"Where'd it go?" the curly-haired man asks.

Rey waits for them to turn their lights away from her, then quickly climbs along the branch she's holding onto, following it until she can jump to the neighboring tree. 

"There it is!" An excited cry comes from the first man on the ground below her, and Rey grins. 

She waits, then leaps to the next tree, a wave of black fluttering behind her. On the ground, she hears scuffling followed by footsteps. 

"Come on! Grab the camera, it's going to get away!"

Rey cups her hands around her mouth and lets loose a strangled howl. It comes from the back of her throat, not sounding remotely human, and she moves her hands as it leaves her, covering and uncovering her mouth, so the noise modulates unnaturally. 

Silence settles over the twilight-streaked forest when she runs out of air. Hushed whispers from below break it.

"Holy shit, did you get that?"

"I think so, I can't --"

Rey interrupts by throwing a black-wrapped package into a patch of trees beyond her. The branches shake and the group on the ground catches on. 

"It's up there!"

The last of the trio points to a spot ahead of Rey and starts running, equipment in hand. The other two follow right at her heels. 

As soon as they dash off, Rey unties the shredded black cape from around her neck and silently drops to the ground. She barely pauses to confirm that the trio is crashing through the pines away from her before running in the opposite direction, keeping her long strides light and quiet. 

It doesn't even take her a minute to reach the hikers' campsite again. She doesn't hesitate as she sets to work, keeping her ears pricked for any sign that her distraction hasn't lasted as long as she'd hoped. 

She goes through the food first, bag conveniently left open and on the ground in the campers' rush to chase her. She doesn't take much, spacing out her haul in bits and pieces across the range packed. A bottle of water, a box of Graham crackers, a can of beans, a pack of hot dogs. Enough to feed her while leaving the campers' wondering if maybe they'd just miscounted or forgotten something. 

She stashes the food in her own bag and swiftly moves on to the tents. She has to be especially careful here, but she snags a blanket from one pile, a long sleeved shirt from another, and a pair of shorts from the last. Not as useful to her now that autumn has finally set in, but she always has to plan ahead. A bit of old fake fur catches on the zipper to a tent as she climbs out, but she decides to leave it. It'll give them something to talk about. 

Shoving these in her bag nearly stuffs it full. She debates breaking into their van, but decides it's too much of a risk. She has a decent haul, and the trio hadn't gone too far away. She hauls her bag over her shoulders and goes back to retrieve her battered cape from the tree. 

As she starts the hike back, she hears the sounds of the three devil hunters off in the distance. She smiles. Both she and they got something of what they wanted tonight, and that's about all anyone can hope for. She gets a good distance away from the camp and stops to slip off the oversized old boots with the worn soles she'd cut into the hoof shapes, leaving her in her thin cloth sneakers. She ties the remains of the boots together and slings them over her shoulder, then follows the path of the abandoned rail tracks home. 

Full dark has settled over the forest by the time Rey tosses a rope up the side of the heap of rocks she calls home. She's found a few crumbling stone buildings like this throughout the forests, especially close to the old rail line, but this one is small enough to stay off the tourist routes and ghost trails. It has a second story, more or less, which also works in her favor, and the stairs inside have crumbled away over the decades. Even on the odd occasion hikers or rangers do come by, they don't think to risk finding a way to the upper level. 

She'd had to make do when she first came out here, and she'd nearly been caught more than once. At least now, if someone finds her, she's old enough that she won't be sent back to Unkar, which helps her sleep easier. She's not sure exactly how old she is, since her birthday was only ever a guess on the social worker's part and she can't be certain she has the current date, but she can count the seasons that pass and know she's safe from at least one danger. Which makes this whole effort worth it. 

She's considered leaving the Pine Barrens now that she's older and could find a real job and a home and all that, but the thought always passes quickly. She has very little money, nothing like the kind of clothes she could wear around people, and none of the kinds of documents that people would expect her to show to prove that she exists. And now that she's taught herself the tricks of surviving out here, she finds she doesn't mind it so much. 

She hadn't intended to take the form of the local cryptid when she'd first run out here. She doesn't believe in the legends of the Jersey Devil, ghosts, or anything like that, but she had been scared of the creatures the stories must have come from: bears and wolves and mountain lions. She'd figured out the last two didn't even live in the area, and while she'd seen a bear once, all she had to do was stay up in her tree and eventually it ambled away, uninterested. Unsurprisingly, she hasn't once seen anything she'd call a devil, even living in the supposed beast's favorite haunt. She sometimes hears noises she doesn't recognize, especially at night, but she'll pin them on another weirdo like her before she assumes an actual demon cursed by more than just life shares her home. 

She hadn't realized how popular the legend was until she'd started sneaking around campsites for her meals. She'd started by making strange noises as distractions, and when that'd proved wildly successful on a certain type of visitor, one they usually had lots of convenient food, she'd expanded the act. She has no regrets; it feels like a sort of natural symbiosis. She gives them a show, and they feed her. She doesn't take too much, and they post on their blogs instead of reporting her to the police. Balance. 

The winters are hard, especially the first one. She might not have survived if it hadn't been so mild, but global warming was useful for something at least. The tourists slow down to a trickle during those months, and she has to make ends meet but scavenging from the dumpsters behind biker bars and Wawas. She's starting to stock up now in preparation, but it's hard to predict what level of bad her luck will be. 

While she's been ruminating, she stored her food, taking out some crackers, peanut butter, and the rest of an apple for supper. It's not a bad meal for her, and she feels content as she makes her way over to the corner of the rough wooden floor she uses to sleep. In the near dark, it doesn't immediately strike her that her things are not exactly as she left them. She freezes as she notices the strange lump placed on her bed roll. 

She doesn't see anything else odd as she looks around, but the moonlight doesn't offer much illumination. She creeps closer, eyes straining in the dark to make out the shape. 

It isn't until she's almost on top of it that she recognizes it as the small body of a squirrel. Grimacing, Rey reaches out and prods it with a finger before jumping back. It doesn't move. She shuffles forward and squints at it. She doesn't know much about wildlife, but she's pretty sure it's dead. 

She looks up. The roof is patchy and in the same ongoing state of decay as usual, a state she only barely holds back, but it's intact over her corner, which is why she sleeps there. Even if squirrels have a habit of dropping dead from trees, which she's never seen before, it shouldn't have landed perfectly on her bed roll. After a brief internal debate, she reaches around and pulls a small flashlight out of her bag. Cupping one hand around it to keep the light from shining beyond her small space, she inspects the creature. No blood stains its brown fur, and there are no other signs of injury, but it appears unquestioningly dead. 

Her brow furrows. She doesn’t like things she can’t explain, especially when they come into her territory. Maybe it crawled up here and found a nice comfy spot to die. Do squirrels die of old age? 

In any case, it’s in the way of her bed. She carries the bed roll over to a hole in the wall and tips the squirrel out over the edge. If it’s still there in the morning, she’ll take it further away from her home. She has considered living off the local wildlife before, but it’s a risky choice, and she doesn’t plan to start going down that path with a squirrel that dragged itself out of the trees to die of unknown causes. There’s plenty of less stupid ways for her to get herself sick. 

Problem dealt with, she returns to her corner and unrolls her bedding. Rey sets her bag to the side and uses a small bit of creek water and a rag to wash off most of the dirt from the day. The nocturnal creatures of the Barrens have come out and provide a familiar blanket of noise, backed by the whisper of wind through the trees. Rey tucks a bundle under her head and soon falls asleep. 

She wakes the next morning with the sun and spends some time taking care of her home and stores before heading out again, to the north this time, where she finds a different group to follow. She watches them stumble through the pines for a few hours in the afternoon, and at the end of the day, they return to their campsite, ready to set up for their night watch. She runs a similar routine as she had the night before around sundown, gets some more food to add to her stores, and the cryptid hunters return excited and vindicated to their campsite, telling each other they're sure to get a video next time. 

She doesn't always find a group to perform for, and some days she has to resort to more traditional scavenging methods, wandering around the campsites like she belongs there while the campers are on a hike, or sneaking around after dark, but those strategies involve more risk and less reward. She's been lucky recently, with the beautiful fall weather that's calling everyone to explore the great outdoors, or at least the great big haunted woods. She returns to her camp feeling satisfied, enjoying the unseasonably warm breeze that buoys her steps. She’s already stocked a good bit for the months ahead, and all signs point to another mild season, all the better for her. 

She hasn’t thought of the surprise waiting for her last night since she carried it out into the trees that morning, but it comes back to her as soon as she climbs up to her home and sees another odd shape waiting for her on her bed roll. She stops short once again. Once she could brush off, but twice? Has she forgotten something that’s somehow attracting wildlife? 

As she approaches though, she realizes it’s not a squirrel like before, or any other type of animal. When she pulls her flashlight out, it reveals a neatly stacked pile of dark berries. It’s not unusual that the forest finds its way into her space; leaves, twigs, any of that isn’t unusual to brush off her things. But she doesn’t quite believe that a handful of berries fell up from the ground and arranged themselves nicely on her bed roll. A creeping feeling runs up her spine and she whirls around, using the flashlight to scan every corner of the crumbling building. Absolutely nothing unusual reveals itself. If anything, it seems emptier than usual: no mice or other small animals scurry away from her light. 

She climbs back down to the ground and paces around the area. She keeps the flashlight’s beam focused in a small spot on the ground and finds some half-hidden deer and racoon prints in the bare spots under the trees, but still nothing out of the ordinary. Her ears strain, listening for some sort of hint, but the forest carriers on as it does every night. 

Still feeling that itch along the back of her neck, Rey climbs back up to her room. She shakes the berries out onto the ground, trusting strange berries even less than strange wildlife. She can’t shake the uneasy feeling as she lays down to sleep, staring into the darkness for far too long before her eyes finally fall closed. 

Her morning starts late when she wakes and immediately has to overcome a wave of panic as she adjusts to her surroundings. She can’t remember everything from her dreams, but she’d been somewhere strange, a different forest, dark and foreboding, running from something she couldn’t see, and then everything had been burning down around her. The emotions from her sleep carry into her morning, worsened with how disoriented she feels at waking later than usual. 

She goes off to do her scavenging for the day, paying far more attention to the woods around her than she usually would. She always keeps on her toes, but today her head jerks around at every noise, even the sounds of birds and deer she’d normally tune out. She has no proof, but the feeling of being watched stalks her all the way to another campsite in her rotation, this one farther away. 

The pall over her extends to her luck that day. She doesn’t find any likely visitors to follow, but she does snag a sandwich and a bag of chips from an unattended lunch box. Gray clouds darken the sky overhead, threatening rain and keeping most campers from straying far. She gives up and heads back home in the early evening. Her steps hurry across the leaf-strewn ground as she lets the rumble of the approaching fall rain urge her on her way. 

Her feet slow as she sees her home emerge from between the trees. Today, she hasn’t been able to shake the memory of what was waiting for her the previous nights, and she dreads finding something new tonight. How does that saying go? Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times…

Three times is a pattern, and not a pattern she wants to figure out. 

She creeps forward, shoes placed gently one in front of the other. Her ears strain for the sound of anything moving in the woods around her, but she can barely hear anything over the beating of her heart. The half-collapsed shape of the building matches the grays and browns of the forest around it, looking no different than how she left it that morning. The trees rustle impatiently, warning of the imminent rain. 

Rey starts to think that she’s being paranoid for nothing, that the years on her own have left her jumping at shadows, but then she steps around a wide pine and sees a dark shape crumpled on the ground in front of her home. 

Her breath stops, and she freezes once more. The sounds of the forest go on around her, unbothered by the sight. When her heart calms down enough that she can force air into her lungs again, Rey takes another tentative step closer. She can’t see much, but the crown of horns sticking out from what must be the creature’s head tells her it has to be a stag of some kind, though the horns look thicker and shorter than she’s used to. They end in points like a deer’s but the way they curve seems different too, and it unnerves her further. 

The big body looks to be roughly the right size for a deer with a hide of a slightly darker brown. Her eyes lock onto it as she approaches one small, slow step at a time. Her heart leaps when she sees its side rise and fall in an unmistakably labored breath. She’d been so convinced her mysterious visitor had left another dead creature for her that she hadn’t considered what to do if it was alive. Without stopping to think, she rushes the rest of the way forward. 

Her mind screams at her to stop as she approaches and more and more of the creature becomes clear. Its hind legs resemble a deer’s, ending in hooves, but curled near them is a very un-deer-like tail with a tuft of dark fur at the tip. She’d thought at first that its back was broken or hunched, but she stumbles when she sees that instead, a pair of nearly-black wings rest collapsed on the shaggy fur of its torso. She’s too close to turn back at this point. Even though her common sense begs her to get away, her thoughts are adding together the pieces and coming up with an impossible answer and she has to know the truth. 

She drops to her knees on the ground next to the creature, barely avoiding the bat-like wings. From this perspective, she can see the front legs, which look much more like arms with hands and fingers and claws, curled up into the chest. Dark liquid gleams on the deep brown fur in the fading light, the injury explaining why the creature collapsed on the ground, if not why it’s here. Rey’s breathing is harsh in her ears as she drags her eyes up to the face. 

The features are as mismatched as the rest of the body. Pointed ears sit to the side of where the antlers sprout from the head, much like a deer’s, but larger and veinier, like the wings. Longer, darker fur, somewhere between a mane and hair, falls around his head. The elongated structure of the face is also almost, but not quite, like a stag: shorter and with smaller nostrils above a more rounded mouth. The parted lips hint at concealed fangs, and Rey has the momentary impression of some sort of forest dragon, huffing steam into the autumn air. 

The eyes draw her though. Instead of the blank darkness or a deer or the slitted pupils of a reptile, they look back at her with something entirely too human in their warm brown irises and a depth that creeps on the edge of things she doesn’t want to know. The pupils widen as they focus on her. Its lips part, and it breathes out a sigh that sounds like “ _Oh_.”

Rey stumbles back, breathing hard. She knows the stories by heart, used them to build her own version. She’d laughed at the ridiculousness of them to herself. People were so willing to believe in things they couldn’t explain rather than accepting the evidence right in front of them. 

All of that fades away in the face of the creature before her now. She’s wide awake, very much present in the real world. And in front of her is the Jersey Devil. 

“Holy shit,” she whispers to herself. Then because that doesn’t seem to encompass the whole ridiculous sensation, she adds a heartfelt. “ _Fuck_.”

The devil cranes his unnaturally long neck to look back at her over his injured shoulder. His patchwork features are hard to read, but he looks almost as unnerved to see her as she is to see him. Almost. Harsh breaths spill from his parted lips, and a pang of sympathy strikes her heart. He has to be badly hurt to reveal himself like this. He must have been living like her in the Barrens for more years than she’s been alive, if the stories are anything to go by, and she’s never had any idea. But for him to drag himself to the ruin where she’s made her home? He must have known about her. 

Pain shines from his intelligent eyes as a single word rumbles from his chest.

“ _Please_.”

A request she can’t refuse. She’s always had too much of a bleeding heart for her own good, and this impossible creature that hides itself from everyone turning to her for help? She can’t imagine a world where she’d turn away. 

Slightly shaking, she picks herself up off the ground and brushes off her worn clothes. “Okay,” she murmurs, half to herself. She looks back at the devil and takes a deep breath. This is real. “Okay,” she says again, stronger, even though her heart is still trying to pound its way out of her chest. 

On unsteady legs, she closes the distance between them. She kneels down again, more carefully this time, and places a gentle hand on the creature’s shoulder to try to see what his hands are covering. He lets her, his clutched hands with their pointed claws falling further down his chest as he rolls slightly towards her, though not enough to crush his wings. 

An obvious hole has been dug into his shoulder, matting the pelt around it with thick blood. She hisses out through her teeth. Not good.

“What happened?” she asks quietly, eyes flicking up towards his. The words feel dusty and unpracticed on her lips, and she realizes how long it’s been since she talked to another person. The devil looks back at her with wide eyes but doesn’t respond.

She sighs and goes back to the wound. It doesn’t look like any kind of injury she’s seen before, and she doubts that a creature like him has many accidents. From the too-round shape and the depth of the hole, she thinks it could be a bullet wound, something she’s been lucky enough to avoid before this. Are you supposed to take the bullet out? She thinks so, but it isn’t like she has any kind of training in these things. 

She looks around the darkening forest, as if something will appear to help her. She knows better than to expect that kind of miracle. As if to emphasize her luck, the first drops of rain start to fall, soaking into her clothes and the devil’s fur. She sighs and hangs her head. Of course.

She stands, gauging the distance between them and her house. She’s plenty strong, but the devil looks to be a couple hundred pounds of unwieldy deadweight. 

“Can you get inside?” she asks him. 

He keeps staring at her without any sign of understanding, but then he rolls back onto his front and starts to push himself up with his arms. HIs right arm, on his injured side, shakes badly, and she rushes over to support him. 

“I’ve got you,” she mutters, surprising herself as the works pass her lips. 

She grunts with effort at the devil shifts some of his weight to her. He’s lighter than she expected, though it’s still a miracle his wings get him off the ground, but his bulk makes for an awkward pair as they straighten. She’s a good head shorter than him, possibly more if he doesn’t hunch over, and she takes a good amount of his weight as he leans into her. One step at a time, they stumble to the open doorway. 

They barely make it past the threshold before the devil’s arm slips from her shoulder and he collapses back to the ground. Luckily, he does so to the side, behind the remaining wall and mostly out of sight from the outside. Rey follows him down to the ground, shoving him to his side and heaving a sigh of relief when she sees he’s still breathing. Huffing, she rolls him enough that she can get to his wound and sits back. Blood still oozes from it and she knows from experience that the faster she tends to him, the better. 

For a second it overwhelms her: she’s homeless and more or less hiding and has an impossible creature with a life-threatening wound on her doorstep. One of those is enough to deal with at once, but all of it? She takes a deep breath and consciously lets her hands fall open where they’ve dug into her thighs. She’ll deal with it like she does everything else. One step at a time. 

Pushing herself to her feet, she starts mentally going through her store of scavenged first aid supplies. It’s going to be a long night for both of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated! (Let me know if I'm missing any tags too)
> 
> You can also find me on [pillowfort as thelastjedi](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/906830), [tumblr as thewayofthetrashcompactor](https://thewayofthetrashcompactor.tumblr.com/post/632966986481221632/excited-to-share-my-fic-for-the-reylo-readers-and), and [twitter as briartrash](https://twitter.com/briartrash/status/1320406320068108294?s=20)


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